By Sarah Mills
SANTA ANA, California, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Ryan Wedding, a Canadian former Olympic snowboarder accused of turning to a life of crime as a murderous cocaine-trafficking kingpin, pleaded not guilty on Monday to all 17 felony charges against him in two U.S. grand jury indictments.
Wedding, 44, entered his plea during an arraignment in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California, several days after he was arrested in Mexico City and flown to the United States in FBI custody, following years on the run.
U.S. Magistrate Judge John Early ordered Wedding to remain held in federal custody without bond pending further proceedings. A status conference in the case was set for February 11, with a preliminary trial date set for March 24.
Wedding is accused of leading a transnational drug trafficking network in conjunction with Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel to transport hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico to the United States and Canada.
He was on the FBI's "Top 10 Most Wanted" list, with the U.S. government having offered a $15 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction.
Shortly after Wedding's arrest, FBI Director Kash Patel described the former athlete as "the largest narco-trafficker in modern times," comparing him with such notorious drug lords as Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and Pablo Escobar.
Wedding, who competed for Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, was charged with 17 counts of various felonies, including conspiracy to distribute cocaine, conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to tamper with a witness.
Prosecutors have accused him of ordering several drug-related killings, including that of a U.S. government witness slain in Colombia in January 2025 before he could testify against Wedding, the U.S. Justice Department said.
If convicted of the most serious charges against him, Wedding could face a sentence of life in prison.
(Reporting by Sarah Mills and Arafat Barbakh in Santa Ana, California, and Ryan Patrick Jones in Toronto; Editing by Scott Malone, Rosalba O'Brien and Christopher Cushing)
